to Storborg that winter
and get cotton print and coffee and molasses and paraffin on credit.

Isak has laid out a deal of money already for Eleseus, and his store
and his long journeyings about; there's not overmuch left now out of
the riches from the mine--and what then?

"How d'you think he's getting on, Eleseus?" asks Isak suddenly.

"Getting on?" says Sivert, to gain time.

"Doesn't seem to be doing so well."

"H'm. He says it'll go all right."

"You spoken to him about it?"

"Nay; but Andresen he says so."

Isak thought over this, and shook his head. "Nay, I doubt it's going
ill," says he. "Tis a pity for the lad."

And Isak gloomier than ever now, for all he'd been none too bright
before.

But then Sivert flashes out a bit of news: "There's more folk coming
to live now."

"How d'you say?"

"Two new holdings. They've bought up close by us."

Isak stands still with his crowbar in hand; this was news, and good
news, the best that could be. "That makes ten of us here," says he.
And Isak learns exactly where the new men have bought, he knows the
country all round in his head, and nods. "Ay, they've done well there;
wood for firing in plenty, and some big timber here and there. Ground
slopes down sou'west. Ay...."

Settlers--nothing could beat them, anyway--here were new folk coming
to live. The mine had come to nothing, but so much the better for the
land. A desert, a dying place? Far from it, all about was swarming
with life; two new men, four new hands to work, fields and meadows
and homes. Oh, the little green tracts in a forest, a hut and water,
children and cattle about. Corn waving on the moorlands where naught
but horsetail grew before, bluebells nodding on the fells, and yellow
sunlight blazing in the ladyslipper flowers outside a house. And human
beings living there, move and talk and think and are there with heaven
and earth.

Here stands the first of them all, the first man in the wilds. He came
that way, kneedeep in marsh-growth and heather, found a sunny slope
and settled there. Others came after him, they trod a path across the
waste _Almenning_; others again, and the path became a road; carts
drove there now. Isak may be content, may start with a little thrill
of pride; he was the founder of a district, the pioneer.

"Look here, we can't go wasting time on this bit of a house place if
we're to get that fodder loft done this year," says he.

With a new brightness, new spirit; as it